Hello Cruel Fate
by Spoilerwolf
Summary: Tag to 'Hello, Cruel World'. On a normal day, it's hard for Sam to tell reality from hallucination. It's that much harder when your head is used for batting practice for a Leviathan and the one person you need, you can't find. Limp!Sam   Hurt!Dean.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hi guys!

Sorry it's been a while. I've had this fic on my computer since the airing of this episode, but never got around to posting it. I wanted a little more pov from Sam around the end of this episode and this is what came to mind. I hope to add a Dean pov chapter to finish the story off later on, so hopefully within the next few days.

A/N #2: Angst, oh glorious angst runs rampant in this story!

Tag to "Hello Cruel World"

* * *

><p>He saw Dean go down in a tangle of limbs and broken glass.<p>

Sam may not have a weapon on him, but that didn't stop his fist from rocketing into the Leviathan, making the creature drop and Sam hiss in pain as he shook his hand out from the hit.

Dean was groaning behind him, the Leviathan was pulling himself up and Sam desperately needed a plan B. Glancing up, Sam saw the busted car hanging suspended above the downed creature. Turning, he yelled for his brother, seeing that Dean already saw what he had as he made to press the button to release the car.

Turning back, he was startled to find the Leviathan not only upright, but already mid swing, a two-handed grip on a crowbar that Sam saw a split second before it cracked against his skull.

The force of the hit knocked him backwards, but it was the resulting crash as the car dropped on the Leviathan that lifted him off his feet to slam hard into the ground.

Sam wouldn't remember the impact.

The fiery agony raced along every neuron and seemed to steal every thought and motion away from him. His limbs flopped weakly and consciousness was but a dream and a thought as his limbs stilled and his head listed to one side, just as blood started to seep from one ear.

His once white vision turned black and all Sam hoped for was that it wasn't Hell he would wake up to.

* * *

><p>Distant sounds pulled Sam away from comforting darkness. A moment's concentration and he could distinguish three voices. Three voices that cut in and out like bad reception on TV. One sounded familiar, the other two unknown.<p>

"Sir? Can you hear me?" Sam could distantly feel what may have been a touch on his arm, but a moment later and it was gone, as if it had never occurred in the first place.

While light seared his left eye a moment later and a garbled cry pushed past his lips as thoughts of abject terror took hold. Lucifer was known as the morning star, the brightest of the angels. Lucifer took pleasure from Sam cowering from his true form – one that made Sam's eyes bleed and erode from his head from just a glance at that looming and poisonous figure.

His arm twitched, trying feebly and unsuccessfully to shield his eyes from what was surely to be excruciating pain.

"Pupils sluggish… unequal…states…signs of… injury."

The words didn't make sense, but the light was gone and even though the pain in his head was doubling and re-doubling, he couldn't help but feel a small measure of relief.

He started to drift again, only to be brought back to almost full awareness when a sharp sting touched the back of his right hand. A hand touched his, stilling his feeble movements. Panic set in and Sam gasped for breath, the pain searing as the movement jarred his aching head.

"Easy. Easy. I'm just setting up an IV." The voice was soothing, trying to placate, but the voice was unfamiliar and the pain was getting worse.

Sam didn't know where he was, who was there with him and his head felt like it was going to squeeze his brain out through his ears.

He suddenly felt something trickle from his right ear and down his neck and Sam abruptly realized that might be exactly what was happening.

A calloused hand wrapped around his wrist, gentled yet strong and unyielding in its grasp. "Sam."

The voice was achingly familiar, soothing. Sam struggled to open his eyes, his hearing growing sharper as consciousness lay but a breath away. "Sammy, wake up."

Dean. Only Dean asked like that – like Sam was scaring him. He never wanted to scare Dean. His brother was under a lot of stress, Sam remembered, though he couldn't recall how he knew that.

His mouth was dry and the name came out garbled and unintelligible, but it must have made sense because Dean's grip tightened around his wrist.

Sam thought it wasn't a bad way to drift off, finally having an anchor to pull him back if he went too far.

* * *

><p>Sam's awareness trickled back like the slow bead of blood trickling down his neck. He grimaced from the loud wailing sound that pierced his already battered head. For the first time that Sam could remember, he finally opened his eyes.<p>

It took Sam a moment too long to place the vehicle as an Ambulance – but between the wailing of the siren, the impossibly loud voices around him and the beeps and clicks of machinery on the wall beside him he felt overwhelmed with all the sound. His vision blurred to the point all recognition failed, even though face of the paramedic was no more than two feet above him.

He shifted his head slightly, feeling the tug of something behind his ears and in his nose. It took a moment to place, his own memories vague of the last time he'd had a nasal cannula. The extra oxygen seemed to awaken a few of his less damaged brain cells, pulling him from spacey incoherent to somewhat aware, but it made the pain sharp instead of dull and he coughed lightly to clear the bitter tang of blood from the back of his throat. His head throbbed from the action.

He closed his eyes for what felt like only a second before he felt an eyelid lifted and a blinding light was shined in his eye. The pain was excruciating.

He groaned.

"Sam, you stay with me, you hear?"

Sam's head rolled across the pillow. Dean? Dean had been there… before, hadn't he?

Above him, the paramedic started talking quietly, words Sam's fuzzy mind couldn't discern, and Sam wondered distantly if he was talking about him.

He peeled his eyes open, staring down at the end of the gurney with blurry vision, until Lucifer's form came into crystal clear clarity. Sam's head began to throb, the pounding drumming against his skull as the world shrunk to center around the devil at his feet.

The Devil in question, shrugged – careless and free. "Hey, so maybe I'm not real. Nobody's perfect." Cold, hard eyes zeroed in on Sam, who felt the gaze pass over him and left him breathless with fear. "But I'm not going _anywhere_ Sam."

Sam could hear the cruelty, malice and torture that was wrapped around a promise that Sam knew the Devil would keep. The Devil may twist facts, manipulate circumstances to better himself, but he _always_ kept his promises.

Something blared behind him, the pain growing unbearable and his awareness shrank as his vision greyed around the edges.

It didn't matter that Sam might not be in the cage anymore - Lucifer's torture was unyielding, unbending and beyond the simple bars of the Cage. Sam could never escape, could never be far enough away to never feel the touch of pain of fire and ice, of metal and stone and all the tortures that an Arch Angel could imagine.

Even as he sank back into oblivion, Lucifer's malicious grin followed him down into the darkness.

* * *

><p>AN #3 - Thanks for reading! Next chapter hopefully within a few days.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Many apologies. This should have been up about two weeks ago, not just getting posted now. I won't bore you with the details, just to say I got sidetracked by a few things. Sorry! I hope this makes up for the longer wait!

A/N #2: Some cussing, angsting and bro!hurt. Just another day in the lives of the Winchesters!

* * *

><p>Dean wasn't screwing around this time.<p>

Sure, both he and Sam had had their fair share of injuries over the years - never mind the ones that actually _killed _them – but the situation currently left them both up a creek without a paddle and heading towards a 100 foot drop at break neck speed.

He kept trying to rouse Sam, even during his phone call to Emergency services without any success. Dean knew Sam had got hit hard and the fact that he didn't respond to Dean's calls or jostling wasn't good. Neither was the blood slowly trickling out of one ear.

Dean snapped his phone shut when he'd given all the information he needed and got the same in return.

Now, he had another dilemma to deal with. A dead Leviathan not twelve feet away crushed under a car, black blood pooling in the pale moonlight. People tended to see what they wanted to see when it came to the supernatural, but the paramedics would be hard pressed to ignore the very human-like hand sticking out from underneath the car.

"Dammit." He cursed under his breath and glanced around. There was nothing nearby that would either cover up the car and subsequently the Leviathan, nor anything that would help him move himself or Sam.

His only option would be for he himself to move them away from the Leviathan and closer towards the front gates – away from the Leviathan. Dispatch had said they'd be there in about fifteen minutes, so Dean knew he had to shag ass and fast.

"Oh, this is going to hurt." He mumbled to himself before attempting one last time to reach his brother.

Shaking the nearest shoulder gently, Dean called out to his brother. "Sam? Quit sleeping on the job dude, I need your help." Getting no answer, he swallowed hard. He tried again. "Come on man, front and center! Get up! Sam!" Sam's head rocked to the side with each shake of his body, but refused to wake.

Dean gnawed on his lip, judging the distance. Thirty-five to forty feet, and they'd pull far enough away to not have the crushed Leviathan discovered. It would have to do.

"You _so_ owe me for this." Dean whispered to his unconscious sibling. He sucked in a pain filled breath as he rolled Sam to his side and slipped his arms under his brother's.

Keeping his broken leg extended, Dean pulled Sam against his chest, catching the lolling head in the crook of his neck. Breathing deeply, Dean pushed with his good leg on the asphalt, dragging himself and his brother away from the crushed Leviathan.

Agony ripped through Dean's leg like hell fire, with Dean barely able to contain the scream. Sam's weight was putting more pressure on his leg, even with the broken limb extended.

Dean pushed them further away, each movement agony. With each shuffle and movement he made, the pain tore at Dean's self-control, until he couldn't contain the small whimpers that slipped past his lips with each pull and drag of his body and Sam's.

Dean dragged them inch by gut wrenching inch until he had reached the main path between the cars and turned left towards the gate, putting distance between them and the monster they had left behind. He already had his work cut out for him with coming up with a cover story without adding a flattened monster to the mix.

After a few more feet, the elder Winchester finally slumped on the ground, exhausted and weak, breathing heavily.

He wiggled himself out from underneath Sam and focused on his ragged breathing, trying to slow his pounding heart. He had to check on Sam, but he needed to regroup and control the pain first.

After a few moments, Dean felt his breathing deepen and his heart rate slow and reached a hand toward his brother. "Sam?" He grabbed a hold of Sam's jacket and gently shook him, hoping for some kind of a reaction.

Sam felt boneless, his body rocking with each gentle shake. It scared Dean that the blood was still trickling out of his brother's ear and he knew Sam very likely had a severe head injury, but as Dean got a good look at the other side of Sam's face, he could see he was starting to bleed from his nose as well. A block of ice sat like a rock in Dean's stomach. This was _very_ bad.

Distantly, Dean could hear siren's approaching. "Hold on, Sam." Dean whispered, one hand wrapped around Sam's wrist in a crushing grip, hoping the ambulance could help in a way Dean obviously could not.

* * *

><p>Dean could hear voices in the distance and he yelled for them, his grip on his brother never waning. Only when the medics knelt down next to them did Dean reluctantly let Sam go.<p>

The medic, a plain 30's looking guy with a receding hairline, tried to distract Dean from his partner's ministrations on Sam with questions of his own. Dean's leg was throbbing in pain; he was scared for his brother who had yet to stir after getting whacked in the head with a crowbar, and this guy was asking about allergies? Dean's patience was probably pretty thin to begin with, but was this guy for _real_?

A soft groan pulled his attention away from his own pain and the quiet, yet grating voice of his own medic. He could see Sam's brow crinkle in what looked like pain. His hand twitched as the medic laid a gentle hand on Sam's to still him. "Easy, easy. I'm just setting up an IV."

Dean, ignoring his own medic's protest to keep still, shifted a few inches and grasped Sam's nearest arm, his fingers coming to rest against the pulse point on his brother's wrist. "Sam."

Sam's head bobbed, slumping towards his brother, his brow furrowed. Blood dribbled from his ear down his neck and Dean swallowed hard at the sight. They may have lost Bobby – he couldn't lose Sam after he just got him back. "Sammy, wake up."

The arm under his twitched, the groan almost sub vocal, but Dean heard it nonetheless. The breathless, "D'n," loosened the clenched muscles in Dean's back and neck like a rubber band. Sam was still there, still fighting.

Someone coughed. Dean looked up at the medic's grim face. "Alright, we're going to load you guys up and get going. Sit tight – we'll do all the work." The paramedic strapped his legs and hips to the stretcher and with the help of the other medic, Dean found himself in the back of the ambulance with Sam.

The doors slammed shut and few moments later Dean jolted with the lurch of the vehicle going down the gravel road before turning off onto the main street, sirens blaring.

* * *

><p>Everything was going to Hell in a hand basket – literally.<p>

Sam had barely been this side of conscious for more than a few seconds before he seized, head thrown back and body thrashing, arm twitching out of Dean's grip as Dean tried helplessly to hold on.

To make matters worse, the damn paramedic tells him that they're going to Monster General, all the while calmly injecting medication into Sam's IV line, not even reacting to the gurgle and choked gasps coming from the body in spasm beside him.

"Would you freaking _do_ something?" Dean yelled, half out of the gurney, trying to find his hold on Sam again and glaring at the medic in front of him.

Unfazed, the guy checked his brother's vitals and said something into his radio of which Dean ignored, his eyes assessing the shudders and whiplash like movements of Sam's limbs which had finally started to settle.

Sam's eyes eerily found his, reflecting pain in the glazed, half open eyes, even as his body trembled from trauma.

He felt the vehicle slow down and Dean ground his teeth together, knowing that they had run out of time.

Sam's eyes slowly slipped shut, his breaths ragged.

Dean wanted to scream in frustration.

Sam was in no condition to protect himself, or even aware of the danger that they were in. In all likelihood, they would be separated at the ER entrance and they'd both be at their most vulnerable, particularly Sam.

The back doors opened and Dean braced himself as his stretcher was pulled out from the ambulance, the jarring motion pulling a groan from him as his leg was jostled. Dean stubbornly kept his eyes on Sam, straining his neck in order to do so.

As Dean was pulled around the ambulance and through the sliding glass doors, he silently promised himself that he would find a way to get himself and his brother out of here and come hell or high water, he was going to figure out a way to get back at those son of a bitch Leviathans for what they had done to his family.

_No one_ screwed with his family and lived to tell the tale. No one.

And Dean Winchester _always_ keeps his promises.

* * *

><p>AN: Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for the continued support!


End file.
